SenesTech, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the CNES Tech Report's first quarter fiscal year 2022 financial results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robert Bloom with Flippant Partners. Please go ahead, sir.

All right, thank you very much, Cole, and thank you all for joining us today. As Cole mentioned, to discuss the NesTech's first quarter 2022 financial results for the period ended March 31, 2022. With us on the call today, Mr. Ken Siegel, the company's chief executive officer, Mr. Tom Chesterman, the company's chief financial officer. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question and answer session. Before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statement. Statements made by the management team of SNESTAG during the course of this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 is amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is amended, and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies that and are generally preceded by words such as may, future, plan or planned, will or should, expected, anticipates, draft, eventually, or projected. Listeners are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, as a result of various factors and other risks identified in our findings with the Securities Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained in this conference call speak only as the date in which they were made and are based on management's assumptions and estimates as of such date. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as the result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events, or otherwise. So with that said, let me turn the call over to Ken Siegel. Ken, please proceed.

Thanks, Robert. Good afternoon and thank all of you for joining us today. As you saw in the press release, we started 2022 where we left off in 2021 with another quarter of record product sales, which more than doubled from the same quarter last year. We have now had nine consecutive quarters of annual quarterly revenue growth, eight of those at 2x or greater since I took over as CEO. Importantly, The monthly sequential trends in the first quarter show continued acceleration of growth in our e-commerce business, with sales in the month of March up more than 80% compared to February. There are a number of reasons why we think this enhanced ramp is occurring, which I'll get into momentarily. But needless to say, we think it bodes well for a continuation of the recent sales growth trends. The other key development this month is the launch of our novel Elevate bait system with ContraPest, or what we're generally calling Elevate, which will begin shipping next week. We discussed during our March conference call the approval we had recently received from the EPA and are excited to announce today the formal commercial launch of the system. I believe the introduction of Elevate will be a defining moment where innovation enables us to accelerate our penetration into a number of key markets, particularly agriculture. I'll spend a few moments later in the call talking through our commercialization approach, as I believe Elevate has the capability to be a game changer for us in this market. So with those general highlights of strong sales acceleration and new product introductions, let's dive into a few more specifics. As I mentioned, Sales for the quarter were up 122% compared to the year ago first quarter and up sequentially by 15%. This was a new quarterly product sales record for Synestec. We continue to significantly ramp up our customer acquisition efforts led by our Operation Rat Race campaign, which has helped to drive a 438% increase in active customers during Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021. and up 46% sequentially compared to the year-end numbers. As we stated in the past, we are taking a very analytical approach to our marketing efforts to ensure we are driving down our customer acquisition costs and increasing the lifetime value of our customers. Considering we are still very early in the maturation cycle of this product launch, we expect to see some significant leverage to both of these data points in the future. We're also making continued improvements in our overall sales and marketing approach, including the pickup of some significant press coverage that has driven customers to our website. For instance, in March, we saw a nice spike in the state of Maine due to press coverage that we received there. The article in the Bangor Daily News titled, Rat Birth Control Could Combat Annoying Rodent Infestations, highlighted the benefits of contrapest, and we saw an increase in orders from the regions. Similarly, we were featured in the San Francisco Chronicle two weeks ago and saw an immediate pickup in our e-commerce business in Northern California. And while the e-commerce pickups are encouraging, we believe they are also an early indicator of growing pull-through demand as end-user customer awareness begins to drive purchases by PMPs and distributors. We're also expanding our digital marketing approach nationally compared to the regional approach we've taken thus far. Initial results are very encouraging. Generally, when you increase the geographic scope and spend of the campaign, you see a decrease in engagement and a higher bounce rate as you dial in your targeting to find your customers. Ours remain flat, and that's a strong sign that we have a broader customer base than we may have originally anticipated. It also clearly indicated that our product is relevant to a wide segment of the pest control market, and is not just attractive in areas that have restricted rodenticide use, like California. And now with the launch of Elevate, we're adding industry-specific targeting to our digital footprint through trade publications, through associations, and through targeted search. We're launching our first large-scale exposure to food processing and storage, as well as the broader agricultural space, and we're increasing our visibility with PMPs. Further, in March, we went live with our Instagram shopping experience. Customers can now learn and shop inside the social platform, keeping them captive at a time of interest versus relying on them to search for us on the web. Also, we recently added a pop-up on our ContraPestStore.com to Buy Now, which is assisted in generating additional sales. Customers can now begin ordering ContraPest with a single click rather than scroll through multiple pages. To further enhance the customer experience, we will be launching a new e-commerce site later this month, still called ContraPestStore.com, but with a new look and feel to better match our successful campaign aesthetics. The team has done a great job on the e-commerce front as we continue to hit new monthly goals for a number of customers, as well as number of subscriptions. March in particular was a record month for subscription revenue with minimal churn, and we believe this will increasingly become a more and more important part of the business going forward and a metric we are keeping a close eye on. From a market vertical standpoint, we continue to see strong adoption by zoos and sanctuaries, which accounted for about 18% of our first quarter sales. One very influential customer in this space, the Miami Zoo, has credited the use of ContraPest to enable them to finally gain control of their rat population around their aviary, resulting in the recent birth of chicks to birds that hadn't reproduced in over three years. To build off this momentum, on April 1, we launched a new contract program specifically designed to target the zoo's and sanctuary's vertical and designed to help with the initial cost of a ContraPest deployment. As I've stated in the past, Secondary exposure from poisons has become a growing concern in these types of environments where non-target animals or wildlife reside. I believe we are increasingly being recognized among influencers within this segment as ideal for addressing the concerns of rat infestation due to both contrapest effectiveness and the lessened risk to non-target and predatory animals. As I touched on a moment ago, we're also starting to see PMP growth begin to accelerate. During the quarter, PMPs accounted for about 16% of our sales. Our awareness campaigns are generating pull-through demand from end-user customers, as well as interest from PMPs who have challenging accounts and are looking for ContraPest as a solution. We have new customers taking our product to zoos, grain facilities, correctional facilities, animal rescue facilities, and residential areas, just to name a few. As pressure on the use of second-generation anticoagulants continues to grow, we're also seeing interest from PMPs looking for new solutions as their normal go-to products are being challenged. Elevate has also generated inquiries from PMPs battling roof rats who are eager for a new tool in the fight and we're anticipating expanding sales in the poultry and agricultural markets as the product begins to shift next week. As I mentioned in March, we're now seeing growing interest from major PMPs, including some of the largest players that were previously committed to their old solutions, and we're now working on product demonstrations with them in real-world situations. We believe this will lead to adoption as the results are verified in the next few months. I touched on this a bit during the March call, but since they were first quarter events, I believe it bears repeating that on the government front, we've announced a number of key deployments in various locations. Clearly, more and more cities, counties, and government customers are recognizing the growing success of ContraPest through various media reports and our sales and marketing efforts. These positive deployments and the media coverage around them are having a bit of a clustering effect. For instance, following the recent successful deployments in Newton, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, we now have a growing number of governmental entities and communities in New England reaching out for additional information. The same is occurring around Columbus, Ohio, San Francisco and elsewhere, where we're continuing to work hard to convert these inquiries into paying customers. Also during the first quarter, where California-based sales were approximately 23% of our overall product sales, Los Angeles County specified the use of fertility control in one of their requests for proposal. Given California's move away from second-generation anticoagulants pursuant to the Ecosystems Protection Act, we expect this trend will continue in future RFPs. And as I've stated in the past, as the only EPA-registered product available for fertility control in male and female rats, This puts ContraPest in an excellent position for further penetration of the government market. Before I turn the call over to Tom to review the financials in a bit more detail, let me just expand upon the Elevate system and how we're approaching the commercialization efforts for this new product. While our experience with agricultural applications demonstrates the efficacy and economic value of ContraPest, Our customers have been requesting an additional baiting option to target rats where they often live, specifically in rafters and other above-ground locations. In response to this feedback, we developed Elevate. The novel suspended bait station we created is easily accessible by rats, but out of the way of people, pets, livestock, food stores, etc. And we're particularly excited about the use of the Elevate system to control roof rats. given the frequent difficulty of deploying traditional rodenticides in the areas they inhabit. In preparation for the EPA submission for Elevate, we conducted extensive trials to prove the effectiveness of the system. This real-world study information is critical, as we've discussed in other market verticals, and it should aid in providing potential customers the necessary data to make informed purchasing decisions and ultimately accelerate adoption of the Elevate system. It's important to note that Elevate, with its suspended bait station, is revolutionary within the pest control industry. There simply is no other effective product on the market like it, expressly designed for above-ground deployment for the control of roof rats. The industry has typically utilized traditional bait boxes to deliver pesticides and other products. and the design of the system is such that it permits easy drop-in and replacement of new 8-ounce bottles of ContraPest, reducing both servicing time and cost. We filed for patent protection for the system in April in recognition of both its uniqueness and its effectiveness. As I stated on last quarter's call, following the EPA's approval, we needed individual state registrations. Elevate is now available in 48 states and the District of Columbia, with the remaining states, Oregon and California, requiring a little bit of additional time to review submissions. At the end of the day, we believe Elevate is the critical tool that allows for ContraPet's potentially explosive growth in the agricultural segment. We will be shipping the product next week, and I look forward to providing updates on the progress for this product on our next call. So to summarize, with growing market awareness and adoption for ContraPest, which is highlighted by record quarterly sales, coupled with the introduction of the Elevate system, we're off to a strong start on 2022. I believe ContraPest is the right product for pest control with significant growth potential based on its efficacy, environmental and regulatory requirements, as well as social trends. And while we look forward to continuation of the recent trends in the quarters to come, we have in place the necessary elements to accelerate growth even more. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom for information on the financials.